


Freefall

by sage (kiwi37)



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Don't ask me when the hell in canon this is supposed to be, M/M, Tim has a near miss, sometime post-red robin but pre-reboot i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24979672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiwi37/pseuds/sage
Summary: Kon is asleep, all of his homework finished for once and the farm quiet and peaceful around him, when Tim screams.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent
Comments: 37
Kudos: 436





	Freefall

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is un-beta'd and absolute, unapologetic melodrama and schmoop, because that's what I live for. Enjoy!

It's a dark, early morning hour in Smallville, not even the faintest touches of grey in the sky hinting at the rise of the sun. Kon is asleep, all of his homework finished for once and the farm quiet and peaceful around him, when Tim screams.

Screams for _Kon_ , specifically, and it takes Kon four seconds of mind-numbing terror to slam past Gotham city limits and find Tim. The grey-and-glass scenery of Gotham is nothing but a blur around him, and when he finally spots what he’s looking for, Tim is milliseconds from becoming the latest red splatter on Gotham's unforgiving pavement. He's got to have fallen nearly eighty stories by Kon's count, off the top of one of Gotham's many ugly skyscrapers; there's no grappling hook in sight, and his limbs hanging limply above him in the air as he hurtles towards the ground make Kon think he must have been paralyzed somehow.

All of this information processes numbly, far below the _go-go-go-go-careful-catch-him-GO_ that thrums through Kon's brain, somewhere between autopilot and blind panic. His fingertips graze Tim's shoulder and it's just enough for Kon to practically throw his TTK around Tim, bracing his head and spine against the sudden change in momentum and shielding him from the impact of Kon's body as he crashes into Tim with just feet to spare between them and the concrete, sending them skidding sideways through the air until the side of an apartment building crumbles under Kon's back.

It's still for a minute; Tim's body is limp but warm, _breathing_ , in Kon's arms, as fragments of brick and mortar rain down around them.

“ _Fuck_!” somebody shouts, and yeah, Kon thinks that's about right. He looks down and can tell Tim is looking up at him through the barely-translucent eyes of his Red Robin cowl, an eyebrow and a corner of his lips quirked.

“Good timing,” Tim says, and Kon has no idea how to respond to that when he's not even sure his heart has started beating again yet. He's saved the trouble of restarting his higher brain functions in time to answer when Nightwing skids to a halt beside them, dropping to his knees and grabbing Tim's shoulder.

“Red, are you okay? What _happened_?” he asks in a rush, patting Tim down as best he can around Kon's arms.

“Ra’s got his ninjas some new toys, apparently; some sort of paralytic in some micro-dart thing sharp enough to pierce a suit. They just tossed me off the roof after that,” Tim says, sounding wry and self-deprecating, like he would be shrugging if he could move. Kon registers sounds of fighting somewhere nearby; Batman and Robin cleaning up.

“Jesus,” Nightwing mutters, sitting back on his haunches. “You scared the shit out of us, Red, you shouldn’t have gone after them alone.” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair, then looks up and seems to notice Kon for the first time.

“Hey, thanks for saving our dumbass,” he says, offering Kon a genuine, relieved smile. Normally Kon would be doing a wild internal fist pump over getting a response like that out of any member of Tim's freaky bat-family, but he still feels sort of flat, like he was the one hit with the paralytic.

“Sure,” he manages, mechanical, and doesn’t move. He can't even really feel Tim where he still has him cradled against his chest anymore, and Nightwing is starting to look at him a little strangely.

“Um, are you okay, Superboy…?” Kon wants to be more reassuring than this, he really does. Usually it's no problem, saving people a hair's breadth from death, whisking them out of burning buildings or catching falling debris seconds before it crushes them. This time, though, he can still hear Tim's scream, the genuine fear in it, and not even the knowledge that Tim is here, safe and alive and definitely _not_ a smear of pink and tan mush and a scattering of skull fragments on a filthy Gotham sidewalk, seems to make that go away.

“Fine,” Kon says, and now Nightwing looks downright worried, reaching out to put a tentative hand on Kon's shoulder. Batman drops lightly to the ground beside them, Robin a few feet behind him.

“Superboy,” Batman rumbles, and in the absence of any other coping mechanism, Kon's Smallville manners kick in.

“Sir,” he says, and he knows he really needs to get his vocabulary somewhere back above monosyllables if he’s going to pull off this whole “I’m totally fine,” thing.

“…Thank you,” Batman says, sounding even more like he's talking through gritted teeth than usual, “for assisting Red Robin.”

“Is Superboy in the habit of making rescues in his underwear?” Robin asks scornfully, and Tim chuckles a little. Kon realizes the brat is right, he's wearing nothing but the tank top and boxers he had gone to bed in.

“Cut him some slack,” Tim says. “It’s like 3 AM in Smallville, and I think he set some sort of personal record getting here. I didn’t know you could go that fast,” he adds to Kon, casual, and all of the sudden Kon is _angry_. A wave of hot, prickling energy floods back through his numb muscles and he stands abruptly, knocking more brick fragments loose and forcing Nightwing to rock back on his heels to keep his balance.

“You're welcome,” he snaps, and dumps Tim into Batman's arms, eyes locked on the Bat symbol on Batman's chest so he doesn’t have to meet any of those blank, white stares. Without another word, he launches himself back into the air and takes off towards home. Behind him, his super-hearing catches Nightwing's mild, sarcastic tone as he congratulates his brother.

“Nice going, little bro.”

*

“Why was he so mad?” Tim asks as Bruce hoists him out of the back of the Batmobile and starts to carry him towards the med bay. Dick, leaning against his parked motorcycle and watching with amusement as Tim flops like a ragdoll in Bruce's grip, raises his eyebrows.

“Seriously, Timmy?”

“I mean I know I dragged him out of bed in his underwear, but it doesn’t seem like that big of a deal,” Tim continues as Alfred sweeps over, efficiently drawing a blood sample so they can begin analyzing the paralytic agent. Tim had already regained the ability to wiggle his toes a little in the Batmobile so there's no real panic about his condition, but an antidote or preventative dose will be useful if this is the new M.O. of Ra's' goons. Dick sighs.

“Timmy, did you see his face? You _terrified_ the poor guy.”

“What?” Tim strains to pick his head up off the exam table, not twitching as Alfred begins cleaning and stitching up the few deeper cuts he had picked up earlier in the fight. He looks at Dick incredulously, his tone skeptical as he asks, “Why would he be scared? He does stuff like that all the time. It's not like he's new to the whole superhero thing.”

Alfred clucks his tongue. “Master Timothy,” he says, sounding mild and disappointed in the distinctly _Alfred_ way that makes you want to crawl under the nearest solid object to wriggle away from the shame of whatever you've done to make him use that tone. Dick decides to sit back and let Alfred handle this one. “I was watching your cowl’s video feed when you fell; you escaped death by inches. Surely you can appreciate that being awoken in the middle of the night with mere seconds to save the life of someone you care deeply about would be an alarming experience, even for a Kryptonian such as Mister Kent.”

“I—” Tim says. Dick glances around, and even Bruce and Damian, cowl and domino mask now removed, are staring at Tim like they can’t believe how obtuse he is. “Well, yeah. I didn’t really think about it, I guess. I just… needed him, right? I couldn’t think of any other way out.” 

Alfred pats Tim's knee in his grandfatherly way and gets up, picking up his medical supplies. “I don’t think calling for him was the problem, Master Timothy,” he says gently, and turns away to retreat up the stairs to the mansion.

Tim stares after him, eyebrows furrowed, and Dick gets up to head to the locker room, peeling his suit off as he goes. Damian follows him, muttering, “For a 'detective', Drake is about as intelligent as a sack of bricks.” Dick wants to defend his brother, but Damian's kind of right. Poor Superboy.

*

Kon can’t sleep.

*

Ma Kent had been waiting up for him when he got back a little after 4:30. He had flown home slowly, hoping the night air and the scenery would cool the furious heat roiling in his blood and the nausea in his gut, but his fists had still been clenched tight when he landed.

Ma had stood up from her seat at the kitchen table, bathrobe clutched over her flannel nightgown, and had come over to place her hand on his cheek, warm sympathy in her expression. “Bad night?”

“Yeah,” he'd said, and let her sit him down and make him a mug of tea, put a few chocolate chip cookies on a plate for him. She'd sat silently with him as he drank slowly and nibbled at the cookies, and when he was done, she had put his dishes in the sink and squeezed his shoulder on her way to get dressed and begin her day.

It had helped, and he'd made it through his own day, gone to school and acted mostly normal, finished his chores without breaking anything. Ma had asked later if he wanted to talk about it, and he had sketched the basics of it for her, felt a little better for her gentle observation about how upsetting it must have been. When she asked if he was okay, though, he didn’t know what to say.

Tim had tried to call him that first morning; Kon had sent it to voicemail, but Tim hadn’t left a message. A little later, he'd tried a text instead. “ _talk?_ ”

Kon had ignored that, too. That was two days ago—it's not like he's trying to punish Tim or anything, but he still feels angry and a little numb, and he's not sure he can really explain it. Usually things like this roll right off his back; even though he's matured since his younger days, he's still not a broody sort of guy, and it takes a lot to get under his skin. Tim has always been particularly good at it, though, and every time it gets dark and quiet and he's alone with his thoughts, Kon can’t shake the image of Tim in helpless freefall, _so close_ to being gone forever.

He's spent the last two nights like that, feeling ice and fire wash back and forth through his blood, chest tight with alternating terror and fury as he stares at the ceiling and replays the scenes in his head. Tim falling, his imagination's vivid, stomach-turning conjuration of what Tim would have looked like if Kon hadn’t gotten there in time, Tim's nonchalance about his near-miss. It's awful, and Kon doesn’t know how to get his head back, make it _stop_.

*

“ _Conner_.” It's Tim's voice, loud but not urgent, calling him again from Gotham.

Kon sits up in bed, buries his fingers in his hair, and Krypto snuffles and whines at him from the rug by his desk. He doesn’t want to see Tim, but the need to answer the call is so powerful it's almost physical—he hates it right now, but it's not a call he can resist.

He stops to pull on jeans and a t-shirt this time, and it takes him nearly ten minutes to get to Gotham. When he finds Tim on a secluded rooftop on the edge of town, he sees Tim first and watches his expression melt from anxiety into relief as he spots Kon. He yanks his cowl down as soon as Kon lands, and it's a sharp little pang in Kon's chest that Tim remembers he doesn’t like the stupid thing.

“Hey,” Tim says carefully, approaching Kon like he's not sure if Kon is going to go off on him.

“Hey,” Kon says. It's just tired; that's all he's got left.

“Um. I wanted to talk to you. To say I’m sorry for the other night,” Tim says, reaching out to touch Kon's wrist gently. Swallowing down the sudden roiling emotion pushing at the base of his throat, Kon shrugs, trying for casual and falling somewhere short.

“It’s cool—,” he starts, but Tim shakes his head, cutting him off.

“No! Look, I'm not sorry that I called you, but… I upset you, right? I'm sorry about _that_ ,” he says, and Kon can see real pain in his blue eyes. The floodgates burst.

“Tim, god, you could have—you almost died, I almost watched you _die_ ,” Kon is trying not to shout, runs a hand through his hair and clutches the back of his own neck until it hurts. “And you were joking about—about 'you didn’t know I could go that fast.’ You didn’t know if I could get there in time, do you get that? _I might not have gotten there in time_ ,” he says all in a rush, and he knows he's babbling and that he sounds like he's going to cry, but that's the truth of what's been haunting him. Tim's face crumples in a way that Kon doesn’t recognize.

“Conner,” he says, and his voice is rough and sorry, but reaches up and tugs at Kon’s arm until his fingers disengage from their death-grip on his nape, until Tim can grasp both of Kon's wrists in strong hands. “Shit, I... I didn’t even think about that. But Conner, the reason I was able to joke about it, I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. I just—I _did_ know you'd get there in time. I don’t know how fast you can go, but,” he pauses, swallows, steps a little closer. His eyes never waver from where they're locked on Kon's. “It wasn’t a question in my mind. I knew you would catch me.”

He says it with a weight of certainty, finality, that hits Kon like a fist to the gut, and he's going to be _humiliated_ in the morning, but his knees just give out. Tim follows him down, sinking to the rooftop with him, still holding his wrists, and Kon shakes him off to pull him into a tight hug instead.

“Fuck, Tim, you can’t _do_ shit like that to me,” he gasps, and he can tell from how tightly Tim wraps his arms around Kon's ribs that he can feel him shaking. Kon drops his head onto Tim's shoulder, lets his best friend hold him like that and closes his eyes until the terror finally, finally starts to recede. When he can breathe again, he pulls back just far enough to rest his forehead against Tim's, meeting his eyes desperately. “I know it goes against all your stupid Bat-training but you gotta call me sooner, Tim, please. I can’t handle a call that close.”

Tim's breath is warm where it gusts along Kon's cheek. The sensation of a plasticky, gloved hand on his jaw might not be quite what Kon is hoping for, but when Tim's lips press against his, that part is perfect.

“I’ll call sooner, I'll try,” Tim whispers. His voice is so earnest it kind of breaks Kon's heart, and if he hadn't forgiven him already, that would have been enough.“I’m sorry, Conner.”

“It’s okay,” Kon says, and kisses Tim again until he knows that it is.


End file.
